Deployment of a community information platform in Santo Antão island: A case study from Cabo Verde

Abstract

We present a case study of a community media project development Alert4You and describe the process of fostering a local community information platform through socio-technical innovation in 4 rural and remote island communities of Santo Antão in Republic of Cabo Verde. A mix of analogous and digital technologies, their affordability and accessibility open up a new space for collaboration in the community, as well as between people, researchers and engineers, that is based on ethnography and participatory design techniques. We describe the process of community information platform co-creation and appropriation in the first stages of research and deployment of community radio stations that foster participation. Participation is an ongoing interaction involving decisions concerning technologies, the actors involved, the production of the content and the institutional framework [2, 5]. We argue that this is influenced by several unpredictable factors and challenges which we aim to describe. The contribution this paper makes is in highlighting challenges in the design and deployment of ICT in rural and remote island communities in Africa.